Lara Pawson lives on the edge of London, close to the forest. She is the author of three books. Spent Light (CB editions, 2024) is a hybrid text combining fiction, history and memoir. It was shortlisted for The Goldsmiths Prize 2024 and was a book of the year in Frieze, New Statesman, The Guardian and the TLS. This Is the Place to Be (CB editions, 2016), a memoir, was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2017, the Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2017 and the PEN Ackerley Prize 2017. In the Name of the People (IB Tauris, 2014), an investigation into a massacre in Angola, was longlisted for the Orwell Book Prize 2015 and was runner-up in the Royal Africa Society Book of the Year 2014. Formerly a BBC World Service journalist, she has made numerous radio programmes and has written for the national and international press on politics, literature and art.